Tag Archives: backyard weddings

Planning an outdoor wedding reception? For a tablescape that celebrates the outdoors while delivering major style, take this Top Chef table for inspiration. It’s built on a sophisticated layering of color, pattern, and texture:

Tablecloth with a large leafy botanical print.

Wide table runner in a natural hue with unfinished and slightly frayed edges (You could DIY this with a length of plain weave natural fabric, like hemp)

Rafia placemats.

Dark amber water glasses.

Sideways glass vases holding pink flowers to give the setting a modern lift.

This screenshot, by the way, is from Top Chef’s 14th season, in South Carolina, at an estate that housed the restaurant and home of Edna Lewis, a luminary of traditional Southern cooking.

As I write this, most of the northeastern U.S. is stuck at home because of a January icepocalypse. Which makes this the perfect time to start musing about warm summer weddings. Some of our favorite summer backyard wedding pins:

Cake and mason jars — two wedding staples that come together to create a lot of fun. You can find recipes for different flavors of jar cupcakes around, but Sarah Jill offers one of the most colorful and simple versions. Six-ounce mason jars would yield a nice serving size for a backyard wedding. Thanks, Sarah Jill!

We’re used to seeing signature cocktails at weddings. How about creating your own signature wedding punch? Food52’s Kenzi Wilbur lays out the surprisingly simple secret to making a great punch — combine ingredients in the following ratio:

Once you cut ribbon, the threads at the end can fray and look messy. Packing up the ribbon to get it to your wedding venue and tying the ribbon to your huppah can make the fraying worse. That’s not a fun look for your wedding. But you can prevent stray threads and keep your ribbons looking neat by sealing the ends with liquid fray check, which you can find it at fabric and craft stores.

After cutting the end of the ribbon neatly, apply fray check and let it dry. After it’s dry, trim the ribbon again to leave a strip of fray check that is no more than about 1/8″ (3mm) wide.

Well, this is big news! Huppahs.com now makes two of its popular wedding huppah canopies available to rent without poles. Perfect if you already have poles and are looking for a beautiful, high-quality canopy.

The Simplicity Canopy, pictured above, is fashioned from a high-quality bridal satin. The fabric’s subtle sheen and substantial hand create a simply elegant canopy that works wonderfully in any wedding venue.

The Ivory Silk Canopy, shown in detail at the right, has the refined texture characteristic of 100% dupioni silk. The light ivory color cultivates a warm sophistication.

Get more details and find out if these canopies are available for your wedding date at Huppahs.com.

The growing summer heat reminds me how much I miss Kuwait, where I lived for four years and where my daughters were infants. Food takes me back there. I thought I’d share this recipe for potato salad with an Arab twist, great for summer get-togethers in the backyard, like a picnic-themed backyard wedding. The recipe comes from May Bsisu’s The Arab Table. To yield enough salad for a small wedding, I’ve supplemented May’s ingredient list with quantities that yield 40 servings.

Instructions

Place potatoes in a large pot and add water to cover by 2 inches (for 40 servings, you’ll need a few pots or cook the potatoes in batches). Bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to medium and cook, covered, until fork-tender, about 20 minutes. Drain immediately and rinse under cold running water. Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl.

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and garlic in a jar with a tight-fitting lid, and shake vigorously to blend. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and toss with wooden spoons to coat. Garnish with the cilantro, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least one hour and up to four hours. Bring to room temperature before serving.

If you prepare the salad a day ahead, do not add the garlic until just before serving.

Picture this dress in eyelet lace for a casual but chic backyard wedding. Shabby chic or bohemian feel, especially. The design is called Laurel, and the sewing pattern is the newest release from Sarai Mitnick at Colette Patterns.

And great news: The sewing level is “Beginner.” You can order a paper version of the pattern or download it.

Having a small guest list means that the people who made the cut must be pretty special. It also enables you to be adventurous with your wedding menu. Flourless chocolate cake is a non-traditional but certain-to-be-appreciated wedding cake. Bonappetit.com serves up a recipe for this bête noire topped with chocolate ganache. It’s not only sophisticated and decadently delicious, but if you’re catering the wedding yourself, it’s one of the easiest cakes to make.

The only fiddly part of the preparation is covering the outside of the baking pan with three layers of foil. The first time I tried the recipe, I managed to put small, unseen tears in all three layers, apparently, because water seeped into the batter during baking. Not good. Here’s a tip that solved the problem on my second try: Handle the foil as little as possible to avoid tearing it. The recipe…

If you’re planning a backyard wedding, play to the outdoor setting with decor and accessories that embrace nature’s themes and use eco-friendly materials, like the items in the Garden Wedding line from the Green Bride Guide.

This is the season when engaged couples start looking in earnest for — and media start posting and publishing — wedding planning checklists. Each year I’m surprised at the number of Jewish wedding planning checklists that leave out a critical item: the huppah. I suppose it’s a bit self-serving of me to mention this, since my company rents huppahs, but I guess I’m hoping to get this item included in as many guides as possible or get it hand-written onto as many couples’ lists as possible to help ensure that the huppah is a source of joy for couples rather than a last-minute worry.

Last-minute huppah rentals are something of a specialty of Huppahs.com. In fact, we love being able to tell panicked clients who contact us just a few weeks before the wedding that they will have a huppah, delivered to their door, no problem. But every once in a while we have to say that we no longer have anything available, which is heartbreaking for couples and for us.

We also work with clients who reserve their huppahs more than a year before their weddings. The nice thing about working with brides and grooms as far in advance of the wedding date as possible, for them and for us, is that we can give them as wide a range of huppah styles to choose as we can.

The check box for reserving a huppah should ideally lie just under the check box for choosing the ceremony location. When you know where your ceremony will be — whether it’s a synagogue, beach, country inn, hotel, backyard, bistro, or zoo — you have a good idea of the style of your wedding and the style of huppah that you would most prefer.

So we recommend that couples contact us to check huppah rental availability soon after they choose the location for their ceremony. That’s when you’ll have the widest selection and the best chance of securing the huppah that works best for you.

And we do try to make your huppah rental the easiest box to check off your to-do list.

How can we make huppah rentals even easier for you? Leave us a note in the Comments section.

As the resident baker in the Bywater family, I recommend these chili chocolate cupcakes for a wedding cupcake buffet (or a great dessert for your Mom’s birthday). Also, I’m told they go well with champagne.

(What was the best cupcake flavor you ever had? Share it in the comment section!)

For the chili chocolate cupcakes, start with Devil’s food chocolate cupcakes from a mix, then add this chili chocolate icing:

Chili Chocolate Frosting Ingredients

4 sticks butter, softened

4 cups powdered sugar

¼ cup milk

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

¾ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Baking tip: When baking the cupcakes, fill the cupcake pan liners a little more than 2/3 full. You’ll only get 20 cupcakes instead of 24, but the cupcakes will be a nicer size.

We love all the positive reviews we get for Huppahs.com, and one of my favorites said we “make it as easy as Zappos.com to receive and return your chuppah.” Zappos is a company that we thought of as we designed our services. We try to make it as easy to rent and return a wedding huppah as it is to buy and return shoes for Zappos.

Here’s how we do it:

We ship the huppah by FedEx to arrive by the Wednesday before the wedding so you can be confident you’ll have it when you need it.

We provide simple instructions for attaching the huppah canopy to the poles. It takes about three minutes.

When it’s time to return the huppah, use the box the huppah arrives in and the pre-paid FedEx return shipping label we send. You can drop it off at a FedEx location or call for FedEx to pick it up, which ever is easier for you.

During November only, receive a 20% discount on all huppah rentals at Huppahs.com. Just reserve your huppah by November 30. Take advantage of the lull before the engagement season storm to lock in your huppah and enjoy this limited time discount.

With 20% off, you can rent a huppah for as low as $195 plus shipping or delivery.

Are you considering a pie dessert buffet for your wedding? Follow these tips to create a mouthwatering display:

Choose rustic/country or pretty/elegant: Does the feel of your wedding lend itself more to a rustic/country feel or a pretty/elegant feel? If it’s the former, choose traditional fruit pies. If it’s the latter, think custards, meringues and fruit tarts.

Vary the pie toppings: For visual interest and to whet your guests’ appetites, choose pies with a variety of tops: crumble, lattice crust, full crust top cut with slits.

Display the pies at various heights: Instead of putting all the pies directly on the table, raise some up on raised cake/pie plates or props such as upturned baskets or stacks of old books.

Add generous displays of fresh produce: Display fresh produce of the kind used in the pies. The fruits can be stacked on plate tiers or heaped in pretty bowls or baskets. The produce will add color and freshness.

Looking for pie recipes? Take a look at our recipes (they’re all parve, so they can fit into a kosher meat or dairy meal):

Instructions for Raspberry Pie

Sort and gently wash berries. Set them aside to dry on a towel or in a colander.

Meanwhile, make or buy your pie crust, then bake it. Use the package directions for baking a store-bought pie crust, or just bake at 350 until lightly golden-brown, 10-15 minutes depending on the recipe you’ve chosen. Homemade pie crusts may require weights to toast evenly without slipping down the sides (line with foil and add dry beans for weight if you don’t have pie-specific tools), but this isn’t absolutely necessary if aesthetics aren’t your thing.

When pie crust is cool, fill with raspberries (reserve 1/4 cup berries for the glaze). Spread evenly, and mound them a bit in the center as shown below.

Place in a small pot the reserved 1/4 cup raspberries, water, sugar, cornstarch, and salt.

Cook and stir with a wire whisk over low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the berries have turned to mush. When sauce begins to thicken, add lemon juice and allspice (if using). Stir until glaze becomes thick, and remove from heat.

Pour the glaze over your berries, spreading gently to cover the entire top surface. Allow the pie to set up for at least 30 minutes in a cool room or in the refrigerator.

We’re continuing our collection of pie recipes featuring late summer fruits, inspired by a trip to Lawrence Farms Orchards in Newburgh, New York, and the growing popularity of pie dessert buffets at weddings.

The peaches are ripe and ready for picking at Lawrence Farms Orchards in Newburgh, New York. So are the pears, plums, and raspberries. Yesterday I took a trip there with my daughters and lots of nieces and nephews, and we came away with baskets of fresh pickings for munching, turning into jams (leave that to Mandy), and baking into pies.

With this profusion of late summer fruit and the growing popularity of pie dessert buffets at weddings, I thought it was time to share some wonderful pie recipes, beginning with a luscious peach pie. This recipe, with a traditional lattice crust top, comes from Deborah Snyder at BonAppetit.com. I did substitute purchased pie crust for Deborah’s homemade crust, because I want to get back outside and enjoy the gorgeous Hudson River Valley. (Today, we’re off to walk across the river on the Mid-Hudson bridge. Beautiful views.)

When I was growing up, there was always one week when every homemaker’s backyard garden exploded with zucchini. All the Moms in the neighborhood would race each other to hand out the surplus harvest to people in the neighborhood who didn’t have gardens before those folks, too, were inundated with more zucchini than they could use.

Those Moms would have loved to be able to hand over some of their zucchini to someone in the neighborhood who could use them for a backyard wedding.

Even if there’s no one in your neighborhood offering you an armload of free zucchini, you can hit the supermarket or local farmers market for zucchini to make zucchini pancakes, a wonderful savory summer hors d’oeuvre for your summer wedding. I’ve tried a few versions of zucchini pancakes, but I like this one from Ivy Fueurstadt in New Kosher Cuisine the best. The pancakes come out nice and crispy. I’ve upped the quantities to make enough for a crowd.

Like all my favorite backyard wedding hors d’oeuvres, these can be made ahead and frozen.

Ingredients for Zucchini Pancake Hors d’Oeuvres

Makes 100-125 hors d’oeuvres

5 medium zucchinis, coarsely shredded (about 10 cups)

10 large eggs, beaten

1¼ cup minced onion

5½ cups all-purpose flour

1 scant Tablespoon baking powder

Salt, to taste

Oregano,to taste

Vegetable oil for frying

Instructions for Zucchini Pancakes

You may want to mix this up in 2 batches.

In batches, place shredded zucchini in a colander and press out as much moisture as possible.

In a large bowl, mix egges, onion and zucchini. Add dry ingredients and mix.

Heat oil on griddle or in skillet over medium heat. Drop a scant tablespoon of batter into the hot oil. Flatten, if desired, and fry for 3 minutes on each side until brown and cripsy.

Make-Ahead Option

To freeze, place pancakes between pieces of wax paper so they don’t become soggy. When frozen solid, transfer to freezer bags. Reheat in 425 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes until crispy.